Photo: Brett Jordan

How old is Baby Shark?

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How Baby Shark Became The Most Viewed YouTube Video Of All Time

The Korean video that proves sharks are more popular than squid

It featured just 18 words of lyrics and two children performing dance moves in front of a colorful background. The video was annoying, repetitive, and childish and has spawned memes, merchandise, and migraines. Baby Shark is the most-viewed YouTube video of all time. It currently has almost 9.6 billion views. Those of you good at math will have worked out that is more than the population of Earth, which is 7.9 billion.

How the doo doo doo doo doo doo did it happen?

Join the shark family and me as we look at the record-breaking video.

Background shark

The Baby Shark video that we have all come to love and hate was released in 2016 by Korean children’s entertainment brand Pinkfong, owned by SmartStudy. It went mega-viral for reasons we shall shortly delve into, but it wasn’t the first successful Baby Shark video.

Other sharks came before the Korean mega-hit.

In fact, the song has been around for over 100 years. The song is thought to date back to the early twentieth century when a version was sung around campfires by children accompanied by various dance moves. It first became a YouTube hit in 2007 when a German version of Baby Shark was published by Alexandra Müller, also known by her stage name Alemuel. The video’s popularity led to a record deal for Alemuel, and her dance version, Kleiner Hai — Little Shark in German, made it to number 25 on the German dance charts. Four years later, American children’s entertainer Johnny Only released a version on YouTube. He had performed at camps for years and had witnessed how popular the song was with children. So he decided to record a performance and upload it to YouTube.

Earshark

Pinkfong published Baby Shark Dance on June 18, 2016. It featured 10-year-old Korean-American Hope Segoine singing while two child actors danced in the video. The internet took very little notice. It was one of 4,000 videos and stories that Pinkfong produced, and even they weren’t expecting much from it. In fact, it wasn’t until 2017 that the video went viral, and it had nothing to do with the company behind it. It first took off in Indonesia, where people began to upload videos of themselves dancing to the song using the hashtag #BabySharkChallenge. Then, it went to the next level when K-Pop bands such as Red Velvet, Girl’s Generation, and Black Pink all started to perform the song at their concerts. With a combined 15.6 million Youtube subscribers at the time, these bands ensured plenty of views and copycats. Or copysharks, I guess. From there, it gained popularity in the United States as celebrities such as Ellen Degeneres and Josh Groban, Sophie Turner, and James Corden performed cover versions. In January 2018, it made the Billboard Top 40.

The shark had jumped to the United States.

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But why was it so popular?

Toddler sharknip

“It’s like toddler catnip. Bright, moving colors; cute little kids; catchy, repetitive lyrics. I would bet anything, though, that a lot of the views are repeat views from the same users.” Elisabeth Dickon, VOX journalist.

There are actually a few good reasons the song took off.

It has a catchy tune that everyone can sing, an easy-to-follow dance, lots of bright colors, and importantly it is very appealing to children. Basically, it ticks off all the boxes for success. “The song has a simple melody that is not only ‘catchy,’ but is also easy to sing and memorize. The video aspect is very important — children are not only listening but are ‘viewing’ and performing the song,” says Beatriz Ilari, an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. Even neuroscientists are impressed with Baby Shark. According to neuroscientific consultant Valorie Salimpoor, “children can affiliate with the words baby, daddy, mommy, grandpa, grandma. This helps create a connection or a bond with the music. These are people that children are likely to have a very positive connection with, again providing a pathway to target the emotion and reward systems in the brain.” It was part of the strategy that Pinkfong employed. Kevin Seunghyun Yoon, marketing manager at SmartStudy, said they looked for nursery rhymes to which they could add a catchy beat. “We focus on finding rhymes that are easy for children to sing along [to]. In the planning stage, we put weight on how easy the rhyme is for children to sing along, and how natural it would be when the rhyme is actually spoken out by children.”

The strategy paid off big time.

Shark tank

I thought I would slip in a fun fact here.

In 2020, three prison workers in Oklahoma were charged with prisoner cruelty.

Their crime? They handcuffed an inmate to the wall and forced them to stand and listen to Baby Shark on repeat for over two hours causing “undue emotional stress on the inmates who were most likely already suffering.” David Prater, the Oklahoma County district attorney, said the three prison workers had acted “conjointly, willfully and wrongfully” in a “cruel or inhuman manner” when they subjected inmates to the punishment.

I guess Prater didn't appreciate the marketing strategy behind the video.

Jumping the shark

In 2018, SmartStudy’s revenue jumped 47% to $34.3 million. At first, SmartStudy seemed happy to rely purely on the song. They released versions in 20 different languages as their original video continued to rack up tens of millions of views. It was a marketers' dream — yet they took time to leverage the opportunity. If Baby Shark were a Disney character, it would have been on merchandise across the globe within weeks. A movie and theme park ride would have been out before Christmas. Their first significant brand extension move was to strike a deal with Kellogg’s. And so, in August 2019, “Berry-Fin-Tastic” cereal first hit the shelves of Sam’s Club and then Walmart. The cereal is berry-flavored loops with marshmallows for those interested — all that sugar sounds great for Baby Shark’s teeth.

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Jaws could become Gums.

Two months later saw the debut of the musical Baby Shark Live!— a 75-minute adaptation of the YouTube video. An experience that sounds worse than an Oklahoma prison. Marketing kicked into gear, and shark fans could also purchase items such as clothing, bedding, toys, and fishing tackle. I do like that last one — what could be better than using a baby shark to catch fish. And finally came the inevitable TV series Baby Shark’s, Big Show!, which debuted on Nickelodeon in the United States in December 2020. After a slow start, they are certainly squeezing every last cent from the sharks.

A shark post mortem

This is where we would play the Baby Shark song over a montage of photos showing what has happened to the main characters in the years since the video went viral. Alemuel didn't release any more singles after her shark hit and seemed to disappear after her one hit. Little information can be found about her online. It seems she had her fifteen minutes of fame and disappeared. Johnny Only’s video has 200,000 views, but he has only 5,000 subscribers. He did take Pinkfong to court, saying, “their version does seem strikingly similar to mine. Same key, same tempo change, same melody, and rhythm.” Hope Segoine was only ten when she recorded the song. Her voice has since been heard by billions of people. In 2020 she was replaced as the voice of Baby Shark but continued to do voiceover work for SmartStudy as well as other companies. Pinkfong currently has over 53 million subscribers to its YouTube channel. It's a very impressive following, but considering the number of views Baby Shark has earned, I thought it would be higher. The founder of SmartStudy, Kim Min-Seok, is reportedly worth about $125 million. Mainly due to one song. A song that will now be stuck in your head the rest of the day.

Sorry.

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo

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